On the bright side, competition in the airline and telephone businesses increased, and progress was being made in the novelty food area – albeit slowly.

Member states also appear to be pulling up their socks when it comes to putting EU law on to their statute books, in response to the Commission’s increasingly tough stance on this issue – although their records are still far from blemish-free.

Ironically, Germany and France, the two countries traditionally regarded as the greatest champions of European integration, are guilty of erecting the most barriers to trade within the EU.

The report shows that 54 of the 258 trade complaints lodged in 1995 were against Germany, while 48 were recorded against France. The UK was the object of only 10 complaints and Ireland none.

Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti gave the results a guarded welcome, but added that work on the single market was far from complete.

“The operation of the single market is reasonably satisfactory, but there is still a lot of hard work to be done to ensure that citizens can make full use of the rights to which they are entitled,” he said.

It comes as no surprisethat the bleakest news concerns the goal of a genuinely borderless, passport-free Europe, which remains elusive. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that companies and individuals doing cross-border business still receive tax bills from both governments on a regular basis, and that pan-European financial services companies anxious to take advantage of the single market continue to face countless obstacles which restrict investors’ right to shop around for the best deals.

In the areas of public procurement, insurance and intellectual property rights, member states have failed to transpose European law adequately, the report says.

Speaking after publication of the assessment, Monti vowed to clamp down on member states who failed to implement Union legislation, or did so in a careless fashion.

A fuller review of the state of the market is due before the end of this year. In the meantime, officials plan to concentrate on ensuring that existing EU law is properly enforced, rather than on proposing new regulations.